Descriptive Summary

Creator:

United Automobile, Aircraft, and Vehicle Workers of America. District 65.

Title:

United Automobile Workers of America, District 65 Photographs

Dates [inclusive]:

1940s-1992

Abstract:

District Council 65, United Automobile Workers (UAW) was organized in 1933 by a group
of Jewish workers employed in dry goods warehouses on New York's Lower East Side.
In 1935 it became a local of the Wholesale Dry Goods Employees Union; subsequently,
it affiliated with the Distributive Trades Council of New York and the Retail Wholesale
and Department Store Union (RWDSU); it joined with the UAW in 1979. The union went
out of existence in 1994, when bankruptcy forced it to close. This Collection consists
of photographs spanning the late 1930s through the early 1990s, with the bulk from
the 1940s, 1950s and 1980s. Besides documenting the life and times of the union itself,
these images provide especially strong documentation for left and liberal causes of
the 1940s-1960s, including civil rights, rank and file participation in union activities,
and working class leisure and recreational activities. This images in this collection
were shot by District 65's own Camera Club, which functioned as staff photographers
for the union's biweekly newspaper, the
Distributive Worker.